Russell Shorto's website

Attributed, falsely but aggressively, to Mark Twain. The source of the misattribution seems to be Canadian poet John Robert Colombo, whose 1970 collection Neo Poems contains the line "‘History never repeats itself but it rhymes,’ said Mark Twain." Still, it's pithy.

I haven’t been posting on the election. It’s Saturday, three days from D-Day, and it’s entirely possible that the Russian government, in collusion with portions of the FBI, is trying to subvert America’s presidential election. Anyone who reads this who is pro-Trump in sympathy, or anti-Clinton in sympathy, please consider. We pro-Clinton people would be very happy to have debates about abortion or immigration some other time. But right now this is a matter of defending the country from a would-be coup by America’s greatest enemy. If you want to help out over the next three days, consider making some phone calls for Clinton.

Seventy years ago, John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” took up the entire issue of The New Yorker. It was arguably the most important piece of journalism ever published. My interview with his son, Baird Hersey, appears today on newyorker.com.

This year we decided to take our summer vacation in Amsterdam. For my family, Amsterdam is not just any destination. I lived in the city for seven years and wrote a book about it. My partner, Pamela, lived there for 23 years. We met in Amsterdam. Our son was born in the city. We have friends, family, colleagues, memories and roots there. It is, logically and in our hearts, our second home. And yet, three years after returning to the United States, we realized that it had become shockingly remote in our lives. So while the trip would be a vacation, the real motive was to spend a couple of weeks reclaiming Amsterdam…….

Three years ago I moved to the panhandle of western Maryland. It’s a wild, mountainous region. There are some lovely Victorian town centers, and also hardscrabble hamlets tucked into the valleys that are comprised largely of low-slung ranch houses fronted by chain-link fences and rusted pickup trucks. The past has a way of lingering in such places; there is no economic development to sweep it away, so it just sits there. (My latest post on newyorker.com.)

Not long ago, I found myself in a beer-tasting room in upstate New York, looking out on a field of hops and sampling the craft brews of a company called Indian Ladder Farmstead. Among the list of beers chalked on a blackboard was one particularly hoppy creation named “Dr. Paul Matthews I.P.A.” Naturally I felt obliged to inquire about the eponymous doctor. The owner, Dietrich Gehring, told me that the name was an homage. He said his passion for wild hops had led him to Matthews, to whom he referred as the Lord of the Hops…

An art historian at the University of Amsterdam has identified, with as close to certainty as one is likely to get, the location of one of the iconic paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, Vermeer’s “Little Street.” It was always known to be in Delft, the only city Vermeer painted, but, though others tried, no one could pinpoint the spot. Using maps, water tax records and mathematics, Frans Grijzenhout reasoned that Vermeer must have been standing on Vlamingstraat opposite what are today house numbers 40 and 42. One large clue was the double gate in the painting: a rarity in the 17th century city. The houses of today are different but the size of the lots is precisely the same.

My book “The Island at the Center of the World” is being developed as a dramatic series for PBS. As if that isn’t big enough news, the great Ridley Scott has signed up to executive produce, along with David Zucker, whose credits include “The Good Wife” and, currently, “Killing Jesus.” The writer of the series — Ed Redlich, renowned for “The Practice,” “Shark,” and the current show “Unforgettable” — is working on the pilot script right now. Arvind Ethan David is the producer who optioned the book and brought all the parties together. His company, Ideate Media, will produce the series together with Scott Free, Ridley Scott’s company, Things are moving quickly — stay tuned!